


Earthen Bones

by sapphicstanzas



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fairy Tale Elements, M/M, Witches, ambiguous setting, classic russian witch in the forest business, immortal creatures, some vague elements of japanese folklore, there are tigers and everyone is sad, though these ones don't eat children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 16:16:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13791399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicstanzas/pseuds/sapphicstanzas
Summary: Once, long ago, the witch found a man on his doorstep.(a fairy tale of tigers, witches, and men in the forests of the sikhote-alin)





	Earthen Bones

_“the fox and the nightingale made a quiet life together.”_

 - the language of thorns, leigh bardugo

* * *

Once, long ago, there was a witch who lived in the mountains, and the witch dealt in forgetting.

The witch was not particularly well-renowned, for it was the nature of his practice that those who visited him did not remember their time spent, but it was common knowledge among the villages that if one wanted to forget, one went to the mountains. What happened there was lost to collective memory.

The witch in the mountains was good at his job.

Once, long ago, the witch found a man on his doorstep.

Rather, it was the witch’s boy who found the man, as the witch himself was not very observant, but the witch’s boy had a fascination with the Amur tigers that sometimes ventured as far as the witch’s door, and the boy often slipped out in the early mornings to greet them.

This was how the boy found the man, unconscious and snow-dusted on the doorstep, with one solitary tiger sat regally before the body. The boy and the tiger shared a nod, for though it was uncommon it was not unheard of for the tigers to bring the witches things they found in the mountains, in exchange for things the witch and his boy had retrieved from the villages. The boy left the man in the snow while he returned to the house, and when he came back with four small bones in a leather pouch that he tied around the throat of the Amur tiger, the creature dipped its head and left.

Then the boy went to retrieve the witch.

The witch in the mountains was good at his job, but his job did not often include nursing back to health dark-haired and beautiful men found unconscious on his doorstep. The witch found this new responsibility very overwhelming, and at first he ordered the boy to take him back.

“I don't want him.” The witch was very particular about the sort of human beings with whom he fraternized, and this particularity rarely ever allowed for hospitality to those who did not immediately offer to pay him. “Let the tigers have him.”

The boy said, “The tigers don't want him,” and the witch did not care for this insurrection. He locked himself in his room for the night and left the boy to tend to the new stranger.

The witch’s boy was about fifteen then--really fifteen, in the years of mankind, and not like the witch, who only wished to appear as young as he did. As it remains nowadays, even the most well-intentioned fifteen-year-old boys struggle with the responsibility of bearing another’s life in their hands. The following morning, the witch found the boy asleep before the dying fire, and there was new pink to the stranger’s face.

And the witch was vain, and stubborn, and a tad flighty for a creature on which the wellbeing of entire villages depended, but he was not unkind. He warmed to the sleeping stranger quickly, and he especially liked the color of his hair. In the days before the man woke, the witch would often sit and watch him for as long as his own business would allow. The boy found this distasteful.

He would scold, “You wanted nothing to do with him yesterday. But now that you know he’s pretty, you want to save him?” and the witch would shush him. The relationship between the boy and the witch involved a lot of scolding and shushing, respectively.

The witch was not present when the man woke, and this was normal. The witch was not often home when they had no clients--the boy thought perhaps it was because he was restless, and he went in search of things which would give him purpose. He never left footprints in the snow.

Regardless, the boy was home, and he had grown protective of the man in the days he’d tended to him, and so when he woke the boy placed a hand on his chest and kept him still.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” said the boy, and the man responded in a language the boy could not comprehend. This, too, was not uncommon--the witch’s boy had met many a villager or other customer who could not speak his own tongue--and yet inexplicably he found this singular instance disappointing. He brought the man food from the kitchen (the witch could not cook, and he relied upon the boy for his skill at the stove), and he spoke to him as if he could understand.

“The tigers brought you to us,” he said, brusquely now that there was a knowing audience to his care. Witches had reputations to uphold. “What were you doing this high in the mountains?”

The man looked at him curiously--the boy was elated, at least, by this. So often when the villagers came to the witch’s house, they were afraid. This stranger was not afraid.

There was a steady pause in which the boy thought he might speak, but he did not.

Before the witch came home the next evening, the man and the boy exchanged words. The boy had asked him his name.

He said, “What do you call yourself?” and the man replied, perfectly understandably, “What do you?”

And it was not standard for witches to tell men their names, because names were powerful, and besides this the boy had always liked the mystery of not having a known name, but the unassuming question had taken him unawares. He answered honestly.

“My name is Yuri.”

The man smiled then, perhaps. It was difficult for the witch’s boy to tell, because earlier he had made him drink tea the boy had made from valerian root, and the sleep aid the witches used was strong. The stranger closed his eyes, and before he slept he said, “That’s what I call myself too.”

When the witch returned, he fell in love.

The boy knew it as he knew that the witch had never been in love before, as he knew that this would change things. The witch told the man who he was--though not what he did--and the man took interest in the craft of benevolent magic. The man took interest, too, in the witch himself.

The boy tried his best to discourage this, because he knew the witch and he did not know the man, but regardless he did not want to see befall him what always befell humans who came to the mountains. One day, he took the man to see the tigers.

“Do you serve them?” the man asked of him, and the boy frowned.

“No,” said the boy, and could not help but continue sharply. “Why would we serve them? They exist here, and so do we. That’s all.”

The man smiled gently. He knelt before one of the tigers, and it dipped its head reverently to him as it did every morning to the boy.

“Yuri,” the man said, and the boy looked up at the sound of his name. It was nearly unfamiliar to him now--he and the witch did not use names, had no need for them. It had only been the two of them for so long. “What type of magic do you provide to the villagers?”

The boy hesitated. The witch had not forbidden him from telling the man, and yet he felt as though divulging such information would be crossing a line. Betraying a secret.

“Forgetting,” said the boy. The man nodded as if he had thought so.

The boy watched the man fall in love with the witch too, though this process was slower and more agonizing to watch. Frequently, in the nights, the boy would find the man and the witch entwined around one another, and the man would place soft kisses in the witch’s silver hair.

Less often, in the mornings, when the witch found he could not rise from bed because the weight of the village’s memories had overnight become too much, the man would lay his mouth against the witch’s spine to tell him stories. There was a sense of ending as much as there was beginning to it.

One day, the man asked the witch about forgetting. For those who had known it would come, both the witch and the boy hurt to hear it.

The witch said quietly, “That's why they brought you here,” and the man replied, “I am a long way from home.”

The boy said, “I won't allow it,” and gently, the man laughed.

“You will have to tell us who you are,” whispered the witch, because it had been months and they still knew naught about the man besides his name. “In order for you to forget, we have to remember.”

The man asked, “Is that remembering why you are always so sad?” and the boy could not take it. He left the house for a several hours and, unlike the witch, he left prints in the snow.

When the boy returned, they began the process of forgetting. The man offered to pay the witch in a kiss and the boy in a secret. The boy shook his head firmly.

“I don't want payment,” he said. The witch vowed no such thing. When the man sat with them at the table to tell them who he was, the witch held his silver head in his hands.

And when the man spoke, he used the witch’s name. The boy hadn't even known that the man possessed knowledge of the witch’s name, and to hear it used now broke him.

The man said, “Viktor,” and the witch looked at him sharply.

“Please.” Softly, begged the witch. “I’ll give you anything but this.”

“I am a long way from home,” murmured the man. “And I cannot go back.”

“Then stay here,” whispered the witch, and the man smiled sadly. There was something no longer quite _man_ about him. The boy thought he felt magic in the air he had never felt before.

The man asked, “Would you like me to?” and both the witch and the boy nodded. The boy felt as if he was under one of the dream spells the witch had used to weave for him when he was a younger child.

“Then please do this for me,” said the man quietly, and the boy understood when he looked at him what the man meant when he said he was far from home. He understood what he meant when he promised them he could not return. And he understood what he had meant when he had asked the boy if they served the tigers in the mountains.

Said the boy, “You’re a long way from home,” and the fox closed his eyes so he would not begin to cry.

“Yes,” said he, and the witch nodded because it made sense. Of course it made sense. He was not of man any more than they were--in fact, he was less so. A fox spirit was of a world in which the boy and the witch only dabbled. The fox was of magic, and he could not return once he had left.

“Yuuri,” murmured the witch, and the boy knew he was not speaking to him. Viktor had clasped his hands with those of the fox, and he had closed his eyes. “We can’t give back what we’ve taken.”

Said the fox, “Can you take single memories?” The boy looked at him now and wondered how he had ever thought he was just a man. He was too pretty, too soft and clever and kind to be a man. And the witch, old as he was, had never been the type to fall in love with something which was ordinary. “Or will you take it all?”

The witch looked at the boy, and the boy blinked back. “We can take as much or as little as you’d like.”

The fox considered this, and then nodded. “Take home,” he whispered. “Leave everything else, but take the missing of it. Please.”

“You will have to describe it,” said the witch, and the fox hesitated before obliging.

While the fox spoke, the boy stood from the table and retrieved a bowl from the kitchen. He filled it with the milky water of the Lethe and placed the bowl before the witch.

The witch-- _Viktor_ , the boy thought--took the fox by the hand and dipped his fingers in the bowl, then lifted his hand by the wrist and traced in water two intersecting lines on the fox’s brow.

“Yuuri,” whispered the witch, and the fox nodded. As if he knew. He had promised the witch a kiss, and one did not break promises to witches.

He dipped his head, and the witch met him halfway.

Once, long ago, there was a witch who lived in the mountains, and the witch dealt in forgetting. The witch was good at his job.

Once, in that same long ago, a fox spirit came to the witch and asked to forget. The witch found him too lovely, and thus could not, with a clear conscience, do what he asked. The witch asked the fox to stay, and the fox replied that he wanted too dearly to go home.

Long ago, when boys made deals with tigers, and witches who walked the mountains and left no footprints fell in love, and men who were not quite men were nursed to health in a witch’s house, the fox decided that he would not forget. The fox kept the missing, but he came to call another place home.

Now, in the days of men and not of fox spirits or witches, there are fewer tigers in the mountains. The villages which used to frequent the witch’s services are gone. The forests at the foot of the mountains are nearly, nearly empty.

But the witch, the fox, and the boy remain. It is said that, wandering the mountains, one might encounter them--but only if they wish to be encountered. Rumor is that the witch doesn’t deal in forgetting any longer, that the fox has taken on the task of shouldering the village’s old memories previously shared between the two witches, that if one speaks their own name aloud in the forests of Sikhote-Alin the fox will share his. They have started using names again, the witches in the mountains.

It is said that if one pursues the witch’s house in the mountains in hopes of forgetting, the fox will teach them instead how to remember. And the fox in the mountains is very good at his job.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this two months ago in a two hour-long sitting, wanting to try my hand as writing almost exclusively in epithets. I didn't like how it turned out then, but I recently revisited it and don't mind as much its flaws, so here it is at last.
> 
> Practical notes-wise: Amur tiger is simply another name for the Siberian tiger, which live most populously in the Sikhote-Alin mountain region in far eastern Russia. In 2015, there were about 500 of them left in the wild.
> 
> Also, nightingale is an oft-used symbol of love in Russian literature (Tolstoy used it frequently in his short stories). The line at the beginning is from Leigh Bardugo's anthology The Language of Thorns, which I would recommend even if you're bored of the (admittedly tired) "dark fairy tale" retellings. I've never read anything modern which pulled off the genre so well, and it features--among other things--gorgeous illustrations and a few magical lesbians.
> 
> anyways, as always thank you for reading, and all kudos and comments!
> 
> xx


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